


Fingerprints

by Tattered_Dreams



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Dom Newt, Glade fic, I'm Going to Hell, In Public, Kinda, Language, M/M, Pre Relationship, Public Display of Affection, Set In The Glade, This is not my fault, ambiguous setting, based on a prompt from tmr discord, bold newt, casual touching, not so casual touching, quite implicit, somewhere in the first film, um, very deliberate touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 13:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13718496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams
Summary: Prompt from discord: Just a lot of casual touching.Here's a hint: ...most of it isn't casual.In which Thomas doesn't hear a word of the Glader's meeting because he's entirely too distracted. And Newt knows it.





	Fingerprints

**Author's Note:**

> Let's make it very clear that I have no idea how I wrote this. I'm going to blame the person who supplied the prompt and made it sound really cute only for me to come along and make it...this. Have fun. I'm going to hell.
> 
> (in case it wasn't at all clear - this has nothing to do with my Newt Lives series :))

The meeting has only been in motion for ten minutes the first time it happens.

The Glade outside is bright and the morning long. Sharp sunlight finds its way through the breaks in the woven roof of the Council Hall and scatters in dapples across the sandy floor. Dust motes whirl in the rays, glowing gold and the air feels pleasantly warm and still.

Gally is ticked off about something, but that’s really nothing new. Thomas ended up here mostly because he came bursting in looking for someone – anyone – who’d give him a job so he wouldn’t be bored. It backfired. Instead, Newt, rolling his eyes at the way he practically fell through the door, had snatched his wrist.

“Sit down,” he’d said, not unkindly but with a tone that brooked no disagreement. Newt had tugged him to a freestanding stool right down at the front, and gently pressed him onto it. “We’re almost done.”

No one argued – they looked too preoccupied to bother – so Thomas had settled in.

But Newt had either been flat out lying, or had underestimated Gally’s ire. They’re not almost done. If anything, the grip of tension in the room seems to be slowly climbing upwards.

The point is, he’s only been sitting there for ten minutes.

Gally spins around and strides up four of the steps. They’ve been carved from the earth in a wide arc that faces the very corner of the glade. Each step ascends in height from the hollow where the two stone walls meet, until the top step lines up with the door. It’s a trip hazard for Gladers like Thomas, but that’s not the point. It’s a miniature, hand made stadium. And Gally knows how to use it.

He spreads his arms there, expression openly challenging.

Newt, looking decidedly fed up, slips around Thomas. His hip brushes against Thomas’ arm as he goes and he thinks, for all of two seconds, that it was a complete accident. But two seconds later, Newt’s arms unfold from their fix across his chest and his right hand rests with purpose on Thomas’ shoulder.

Thomas feels his breathing catch and he stills under the pressure. Newt has a bad leg – does he sometimes just need to catch balance? Thomas hasn’t noticed, but maybe that’s because it’s never been him before. To test the theory, he lifts his eyes, flicks them around the hall. Someone must have seen.

If they have, they clearly don’t care, or simply don’t see it as a big deal.

Frypan eyes Gally with consideration, Clint is shaking his head, Winston twirls a knife.

Thomas figures it’s nothing. He likes Newt; the steady warm weight of the slender hand curled over his shoulder, the fingertips brushing his collarbone is…okay. Nice, actually. He stays still.

Thomas couldn’t even begin to tell anyone what they’re arguing about.

He feels oddly distant from the tension, like watching it through someone else’s eyes or hearing the argument from another room. Newt paces behind him four times. Three of those are accompanied by a brush of his fingers across the line of Thomas’ shoulders. Still no one even glances his way. There’s a sharp tingling spreading across his skin, a coiling feeling, like a spring being pulled too tight in the base of his spine. But he sits still. It’s not exactly unpleasant it’s just…difficult.

The Council Hall is a rising, crackling hum of voices and then Alby’s cuts across them all. Shortly after that, it seems like the entire glade is pouring in.

It occurs to Thomas to wonder if there’s even enough room for everyone.

“Move, Tommy,” Newt tells him.

Before Thomas can even process that – they haven’t been talking to him at all – Newt’s hands are against his back, firmer than all the times before. Fingers press warmly into the nodules of his spine where he’s slouched over. Vivid sparking arcs of static energy pulse up under his skin and he feels heat bloom at the back of his neck. He sits bolt upright, Newt’s fingers now aligning in the indent between muscle and bone as he guides him off the stool. Thomas goes without a second thought.

They move in synch, climbing up the carved steps to the back of the hall where the roof is lowest, barely enough room to stand straight. There Newt gently squeezes Thomas’ shoulder again and Thomas sits down on the step he’s been placed at. It doesn’t once occur to him to question or protest. He lost track of what was happening a long while ago. He’s not altogether bothered by that.

The Slicers all gather together, the Track Hoes and the Cooks in their own factions. Zart, Fry and Winston are sat on stools down in the centre, right where Thomas had been up until a moment ago. Alby waits in the very corner as the boys shuffle and arrange themselves.

Newt drops onto the last step, behind Thomas, the wall of branches right at his back.

“Shouldn’t you be down there?” Thomas asks him, glancing over his shoulder. He’s talking quietly, and with the clamour of voices, all throwing around questions and groans at the unplanned meet, he knows no one else will hear it – not even the boys sitting just feet away from him with the team of Sloppers. Chuck is three steps further forwards next to Tim.

Newt shakes his head. “Nah,” he replies, totally at ease, his own voice soft so it won’t travel. “I’m not a keeper. This is their bloody circus now. Alby’s got it anyway.”

Alby calls order as though he was waiting for the cue, even if he couldn’t possibly have heard.

Thomas thinks its something to do with chores, or possibly rotas. He really does try to tune in – he’s one of them now – but he doesn’t even have time to reset his brain.

Newt is leaning forward, right behind him. He seems vividly focused on the debate as Alby gives people a chance to speak, but with the blonde boy’s weight braced over on his knees, all Thomas can feel is the steady exhales of breath that flutter across the back of his neck, lifting a deep flush from under his shirt. His heart is pulsing and the golden warmth of the room starts to feel tacky and heavy.

What the fuck is happening?

How is he meant to tune in on anything in these conditions?

Thomas holds his breath, forcibly pushes the bubbling feeling in his chest down as far as it will go and then counts backwards from twenty. When he hits one, he’ll be listening to Alby. He’s going to forget all about this.

He gets to seven and that’s when he feels Newt touch him.

He’s leant forwards a little himself, easier to try to keep his breathing in check and look like he’s actually paying attention, and he feels it acutely, like being shocked, when Newt’s curled knuckles trace slowly down his spine again, the faint bumping as he scrolls down over the vertebrae. It’s a deliberate, incredibly conscious touch, and yet so light.

Thomas freezes completely under the sensation. His brain is suddenly blank, not just unfocused but completely wiped clean, like someone’s turned it up and just shaken everything out. He can feel that coil deep at the root of his spine twist and knot.

Newt draws his hand back slowly.

Thomas lets out a sharp exhale and feels for a second like won’t be able to hold up his own weight. He can feel that tight heat spreading up the back of his neck and is somewhere between disappointed and mortified.

But no one even notices _that_.

He glances around, feels like he’s seeing through fogged lenses and the entire Hall has exploded into a raucous cacophony of voices. Thomas has a brain cell spare somewhere to be both shocked and mildly impressed. Newt is still listening. Not only was he listening to the debate and in tune enough to guess that this would be the reaction, but he was perceptive enough to also draw back at that moment. Did he know Thomas had been holding his breath? Thomas hadn’t even realised.

The realisation that not only has Newt touched him with this single-minded purpose but also done it while paying total attention to the Glader’s current issue sends a white hot bolt of _something_ racing down to the pit of his stomach.

The Gladers are still arguing – a few on their feet, a couple waving tools in the air – when Newt’s fingers press into him again.

Thomas bites on his tongue to stop himself making a noise, but he must make something of a choked sound because Newt stills, thumb pressing deliberately into the lowest point of his back.

“Alright there, Tommy?” he asks.

Amusement colours his tone, but his voice is low, purposeful.

He feels like he’s going to shatter, implode, that his blood is running five degrees too hot, sliding backwards the wrong way in his veins but there’s only one answer to that question.

“I’m fine.”

A fraction of a second passes, and then Newt resumes.

Somehow, impossibly, still no one is paying them the slightest bit of attention.

Thomas’ world has narrowed down to the blood rushing in his ears, the dizzying speed at which his heart hammers under the collar of his shirt, and the firm, deep press of Newt’s thumbs as they trace a line up his back.

The Council Hall falls into a hush.

Thomas can’t move. He wants to bolt upright, to fold inwards, but he can’t force himself to so much as flinch; not when he knows it will mean ending whatever this has become. He feels like every muscle in his body has been tightly wrung, his clothes scratching his skin over the fevered path that’s been burned in by Newt’s fingers.

Faces turn, and for the first time in a long while, Thomas’ eyes focus. He’s startled by how full the hall is – how many people are crammed inside. And…his heart shudders. Now is when they all decide to pay attention to him?

“What do you think, Newt?”

Relief floods sharp and clear through Thomas’ frayed nerves. Thank god they’re not asking him; he could not have told them a thing.

Newt presses into him again, right over the bump of his spine between his shoulder blades and Thomas almost swallows his tongue. There’s no way to misinterpret that; the choice he’s making even with all eyes zoned in on them.

Not that anyone – _seriously_? – appears to have noticed a thing.

“I think the best choice is one we can all agree on,” Newt says slowly. There’s no hint in his tone that he’s not been listening, that he currently has his hands on Thomas, or that they’re still moving.

“But if that’s not possible,” Newt continues as his hands do, fingers tracing, alternating light and firm, “then a majority vote.”

“See?” Frypan cheers.

And with that all heads snap back to the front.

Thomas’ head drops forwards as soon as they look away because he simply can’t hold it up anymore. His throat feels tight, his head humming. He can feel the very low chuckle Newt makes through the vibration of fingers on his skin – his _skin_ now – and then…Newt blows a deliberate breath across the back of his neck.

His nerves snap. Kinetic energy sparks through them and his body locks down, pulls taut. He can feel the jarring trip of his heart as it batters his ribcage and the hot flush ripping through his bloodstream. He shivers, unable to hold it in.

“Okay, majority rules!” Alby shouts out.

There’s a roar and then a stampede.

Thomas never raised a hand, never even heard the options. In the privacy afforded by the clamour of dozens of boys emptying out into the open air, Thomas sucks in a shaky breath.

“What was the verdict?” he asks. He’s startled to hear his own voice come out as a low rasp. How hard did he bite on his tongue?

Newt huffs a laugh behind him.

Very suddenly, he’s standing up, his hands falling away from Thomas’ neck and Thomas reels, blinking, trying to work out when, how they even got to this. And still it doesn’t even occur to him to protest.

Newt shrugs. His hair is mussed, his eyes bright but he looks completely at ease, the strap of his scabbard still stretched across his chest.

Thomas’ heart jack knifes under the wing of his collarbone. He wasn’t prepared for any of this – for Newt, who he’s always liked – to be…what? Interested? Unapologetic?...Bold?

All he can feel are fingerprints on his spine and whispers on his skin. Blazing tension coils ever tighter in his veins. He’s not…opposed. Even a little.

“I’ll tell you later,” Newt says. “Back to work, Tommy.”

And with that, the taller boy ducks out of the now quiet hall.

Very suddenly, Thomas is left alone there. It feels far larger now, colder, too even if the light is still dappled on the floor, the dust motes hanging in the beams and glowing like fireflies.

He needs to take a walk. He needs – fuck, there’s a lot of things he suddenly needs – but he’s going to start with a walk.

**Author's Note:**

> We didn't get enough happy times in the Glade for these two. Not by a long shot.
> 
> Also, I don't imagine Newt is as unaffected as he seems. Just....leaving that here.


End file.
